RMP Mirrors: A Mage's Role

RMP Mirrors: A Mage's Role






An RMP mirror can be one of the hardest match ups for a Mage because of the intricate plays we must pull off to secure a win. The Mage in an RMP mirror sets the pace for the game with the control that we can have onto the other team. This is why people find the mage vs mage in an RMP mirror so interesting because of the high level of skill involved. With so many choices it's easy to not be 100% sure of what you should do in the mirror match. What should I counterspell?, Who do I sheep?, Who's my focus? Deepfreeze offensively or defensively? ¿

Let's first start off with the basics: gear and spec.

Speccing The Part

Your spec for fighting an RMP mirror is a little bit easier to come up with now that Permafrost has a little mortal strike effect to it. Because of this MS effect both cone of cold and crippling poison can potentially be on the same target with full snare talents (permafrost and chilled to the bone making cone a 70% snare). Before, if one had full snare talents cone of cold would override crippling poison which is extremely unwanted since the enemy priest can simply dispel cone and the target is no longer snared.

So now that you don't have to drop a talent in permafrost to worry about overriding crip, your spec should look a bit like this:

http://us.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Major+League+Gaming&n=Zkoopookz&group=1

Frost warding is nice in case the RMP swaps to you and you want to negate some frost or fire damage, or it's good if mirror images are casting on you and you want to get some mana from it. But the main reason I pick up frost warding is because of those dreaded priest mage 2v2s that RMP can come down to.

I do not get Cold as Ice simply because most RMP teams do not train mages long enough for the Ice Barrier cooldown to be a huge factor in the game.

Points in improved cone of cold may be swapped out into piercing ice depending on a your play style, I personally have always loved improved cone of cold.

Glyph To Win

My choice of glyphs when fighting RMP are both Glyph of Evocation, and Glyph of Polymorph 100% of the time. I then either choose Glyph of Iceblock, Glyph of Icebarrier, or Glyph of Mana Gem. For live servers I recommend picking up Glyph of Icebarrier since you don't just fight RMP.

At Blizzcon and MLG Dallas I used glyph of Iceblock (got the idea from Orangemarma) and it really allowed for some crazy plays. With this glyph every time you Iceblock it resets your Frost Nova cooldown so you can do dirty things like Frost Nova > Tap Ice Block > Frost Nova > Coldsnap > Frost Nova for three instant novas.

Gear is Key

Against RMP you want to have 120 spell penetration to negate Magic Absorbtion and Mage Armor, 8% hit and stacked haste. The 8% hit is to cover for Heightened Senses, as resists really can lose a game. Stacking haste is great in the mirror match because it lowers your global cooldown and allows for those “around the pillar” latency sheeps to happen. To show you an example of this gear here's the armory of my MLG character set up to fight RMP.

http://us.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Major+League+Gaming&cn=Zkoopookz&gn=Reckful+dot+com

Alright enough of the basics let's get into game play. An RMP's strat will differ from team to team, some teams like starting priest then swapping. Other teams will wait for a sap on rogue, sit around till stealth see comes up or even start mage if they sap priest. No matter what the strat is the most important thing is that your team is on the same page.  In most of what I'm talking about below I'm going to assume you're RMP is trying to score kills on rogue since that's the most popular strat.

Focus my Friend

My focus swaps many times in a game with macros that I have bound because that's just how I monitor casts and do counterspells/polymorphs on the priest and mage. Here are the macros that I use for this:

Set Priest as Focus (Shift-R)

/target Sodah

/focus

/targetlasttarget

Set Mage as Focus (Shift-S)

/target Venruki

/focus

/targetlasttarget

If I had to recommend one focus target for an entire game against RMP it would be the enemy mage. However it is obviously better to swap focus between priest/mage rather than just having it on mage. One thing I do advise is to swap your focus to the priest when he is in sheeps or blind to monitor the duration of the CC. Make sure your focus target is in a good spot on your screen so you don't have to stop watching the fight while trying to see casts.

Dynamic Nameplates

You need class colored nameplates bound to a convenient key to be successful against RMP. Constantly being updated with the enemy team's positioning using class colored nameplates really gives you an edge in your play.

Can you Spell Counterspell?

With your focus on mage, depending on the situation, you want to try and counterspell a frost bolt or a polymorph. If your rogue gets sapped and your team is forced to play a defensive game look to counterspell frost bolts to stop that early mage damage. Try and hold off on imp csing a mage soley to get a sheep off, this is a really bad way to use counterspell. If you are ahead of the game and putting out pressure counterspell the mage's polymorph and take advantage of that 8 second arcane tree lockout and freecast some damage since you can't get counterspelled.

Many mages try to fakecast early game so be wary of that, or try some fakecasts yourself. Faking a counterspell is huge momentum for your team since you and your priest can both free cast and it's also great time to use Power Infusion.

Make sure to let your team know if the enemy mage used counterspell, some people use Afflicted or cooldown timers for counterspell but for those of you with no addons I recommend using a stopwatch command counting down from 23 (factors in 1 second of delay).

/script Stopwatch_Play()
/sw :23

You are required to bind this macro and hit it every time you get counterspelled which is obviously a pain but well worth it if you get used to doing this regularly.

Counterspelling the priest can guarantee kills on rogue at key points in the game. Try and “feel” (I call it the sixth sense) when the priest is going to need to come out in LOS and heal. If the enemy mage is free of polymorph dr (diminishing return) you can use your counterspell on the priest heal and just sheep the incoming mage casts. Or if the priest seems sheepable (not by a pillar, no SW:Death) you can attempt to sheep him when he comes out in LOS and counterspell the mage casts. If you are attempting to lock out the priest's heal try and get penance rather than flash heal especially since flash heal is more likely to be a fake cast anyway. Also if you spot a priest running out of LOS to divine hym, check on your blink cooldown and try and blink counterspell that divine hym right before it ticks.

Polymorph and Mind Games on the Priest

Sheeps on the enemy mage are usually used to stop casts when you cannot interrupt them otherwise. If the mage has no trinket and the enemy priest is out of LOS behind a pillar (most likely getting attacked) you can use sheep to kind of strand the enemy mage. For example, sheep the mage out in the open and blink behind that pillar where the priest is getting owned then pop a few steps out of the pillar and resheep him. Since Mage Armor reduces magic debuffs by 50% you're not looking to sheep the mage as a reliable CC.

Sheeping the enemy rogue is a good idea if your rogue is cheapshotted since you can stop a lot of damage, expect these sheeps to get dispelled really quickly though. Another way to use sheep on the enemy rogue is to sheep him for a split second so your rogue can kidney/evis him while he's evasioned. You want to make sure he's not sheeped for too long though or he'll get healed.

Priest control can be one of the hardest things in this match up if you're fighting a good priest. A good priest will always know where you are move around the pillar or map accordingly. You can harass the priest simply by correctly positioning yourself in a way so he is threatened by counterspell and sheep just by popping out of the pillar to heal.

Deepfreeze is one of the most reliable ways to get full sheeps on the priest since it stuns him, otherwise he can simply death your sheep or LOS the sheep. You can attempt to fake deaths but remember that if the priest is by a pillar and you fake death he is just going to run behind the pillar until his death is back up again. Fingers of Frost is usually how you will pull off deep freezes on priests but sometimes I find that I have to put my pet on the priest to pet nova deep them in order to go around the corner and full sheep them. When I feel I need fingers of frost to pull something off I try and get some procs with cone of cold. Cone of cold is the best way to get fingers/fireball procs so if you can line up your cone of cold to hit all three players or a stack of mirror images try and do so.

What's your Favorite Position?

Positioning yourself to screw the enemy rogue out of vanishes and effective kiting is very important. You can't be too close to the rouge though or he can kick casts and gouge you (Woundman you). It's your job to watch if crippling falls off the rogue and instantly try and cone of cold him, or rank one frostbolt the rogue. You never want the rogue to think he's in a position to kite which is why keeping him snared is important.

With the right amount of practice you can get to the point where you know the rogue has to vanish and you have your finger on frost nova or pet nova hovered on the rogue already. On that note, if you know your nova is going to break the rogue out of stealth try and wait a little bit to nova him out. If you wait a bit to break him out with nova he will come out of stealth rooted. If you do not wait and instantly nova him out he will simply come out of vanish running around instead of getting rooted. So if you know the rogue can't get away from your nova just wait a little bit so you surely root him in place.

Using blink is also very effective to get far away rogues out of vanish. But the second you blink you are going to be on global for a bit before the nova so make sure you don't blink too close to the rogue or you will get cheapshotted instantly. Or sometimes you can blink ontop of the rogue, they'll try and cheapshot you but you've instantly changed the direction you're running so you're not in range and your nova hits them.

Early game positioning should revolve around what the rogue is doing since he still has a lot of cooldowns, late game positioning should be trying to harass the priest limiting his healing as much as possible. Where it gets tough is doing all this while still monitoring the mage casts and the mage positioning.

So How do you Actually Kill Em?


Coordination with your rogue is how you get kills. Usually as the mage you can force a trinket on a priest if you catch him in full cc chains. So if you call for a full blind on priest usually the enemy rogue will go down in a deep/kidney. I know above I said that I use deepfreeze to get sheeps off on the priest but be aware of your rogue communicating to you. If he calls our that his kidney dodged and you have a fingers proc up you should definitely deep freeze the rogue. It's all about coordinating stuns with your rogue while you know you have potential CC on the enemy priest. Counterspelling the mage won't get you kills but it is needed to win the game. Counterspelling the priest, however, can get you kills. It's all about situational coordination that is different every game.

You as the mage can do little things to try and make the most of this coordination. Like saving two fingers procs for double icelance, or saving a fireball proc to blow into a kidney are all little things that make a difference.

So find out what works for you regarding Polymorph and Counterspell, get your gear, spec, and glyphs, coordinate with your rogue, have fun and you'll find yourself dominating RMP mirrors. 

Check out my blog on SK, and read my more humorous article on Reckful.

Later

Here's Orangemarma Almost Orangemarmaing us

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